VPRI portfolio staffing updates

Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation (OVPRI)

Julia Baum – Special Advisor, Climate

Marine biologist Julia Baum is an expert in coral reef ecology, fisheries, and ocean climate change impacts and solutions. She is a UVic President’s Chair and the director of Coastal Climate Solutions Leaders (CCSL), a first-of-its-kind graduate training program that prepares students to tackle the climate crisis head-on.

Julia earned her B.Sc. from McGill University and her M.Sc. and PhD from Dalhousie University. She joined UVic’s Department of Biology in 2011, following two prestigious fellowships at UC San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and UC Santa Barbara.

In 2017, Julia was named to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists and was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, in addition to an EWR Steacie Fellowship in 2018.

Julia is a strong advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusivity in academia. She is committed to communicating science and the need for climate solutions to policymakers and devotes considerable time to public engagement.

Over her two-year term, Julia will lead the development and implementation of the climate-related research initiatives outlined in Aspiration 2030 and the Climate and Sustainability Action Plan (CSAP).

Micah Brush – Post-doctoral Fellow Administrator

As part of Aspiration 2030, OVPRI has increased support for post-doctoral fellows, which will benefit both PDFs and their supervisors. Micah is the new point of contact for the UVic PDF community and any PDF-related inquiries.

Micah joins us from his role as an NSERC/MITACS-funded post-doc with the Lewis Research Group in UVic’s Department of Biology. As a post-doc, Micah worked on mathematical models of mountain pine beetle spread in Alberta, particularly under climate change. He completed his PhD in Physics at UC Berkeley on ecological disturbances and has also done research in cosmology and theoretical physics. His engagement with the Canadian Association of Post-doctoral Scholars and EDI committee experience are assets in this role.

Philip Burgess Cox – ACET Strategic Communications Officer

Phil is an award-winning storyteller with a breadth of expertise in media relations, partner engagement, brand/reputation management and strategic communications planning. He spent the last year working on high-priority initiatives within the University Communications and Marketing and Student Affairs portfolios. In his new role, he will develop stories and narratives for UVic’s Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET) initiative and lead strategic communications to support ACET’s external engagement activities. 

Phil holds a Master of Arts (English/CSPT) from UVic and a Bachelor of Arts (English/Philosophy) from the University of Toronto. Before joining UVic in 2020 as the Communications Officer for the Faculty of Humanities, Phil worked at the University of Toronto and as a freelancer, building marketing and communications strategies for various clients. Phil is a compassionate, values-driven communicator who is respected and admired for his collaborative, intuitive and respectful approach. 

Kathryn Callahan – Senior Development Officer, Health Research

In this new role, Kathryn will work with the Office of the VP Research & Innovation, specifically with CanAssist and the Institute in Aging and Lifelong Health, to secure major philanthropic gifts.

Kathryn has major gift fundraising experience working as Director at the University of Colorado’s College of Nursing on the Anschutz Medical Campus and as Associate Director at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Medicine, where she raised philanthropic funds to support medical research, education and community programs. She was also the Development Officer at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, where she played a pivotal role in advocating for and educating the broader community about reproductive health. Most recently, Kathryn came to us from Glenlyon Norfolk School, where she was Manager, Advancement and Stakeholder Engagement. 

Kathryn’s love for post-secondary fundraising has drawn her to UVic at the perfect time as we work to support the health priorities here.

Liz Matthews & Lytton McDonnell – Strategic Project Officers

Liz Matthews and Lytton McDonnell have temporarily joined the OVPRI’s Strategic Research Initiatives team as Strategic Project Officers until June 2025.

Lytton was the Faculty Grant Officer for Fine Arts and Humanities for the past six years. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Ottawa, a Diploma in Music Composition from Selkirk, a Master of Arts in History from UVic, and a PhD in History from Rutgers University.

Liz joins the SRI team with twenty years of experience in project management, laboratory and manufacturing site buildouts, and facility regulatory licensing in the biotech industry, ranging from small start-ups to big pharma companies. Liz has a BSc in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and a PhD in Microbiology from UVic.

Cairo Sanders – Research Data Analyst

Cairo has joined the Research Intelligence team for an eight-month part-time secondment from UVic Libraries where she has been part of the team for two years. Her educational background includes a BSc in computer science and psychology from UVic, where she specialized in data visualization and data science. Cairo’s expertise lies in Python, APIs, and Power BI.

Office of Research Services (ORS)

Tanya Battersby – Research Grants Officer

Tanya will work with the faculty grant officer network to support health research funding applications from researchers across campus. She joins ORS with almost seven years of experience as the research and grants facilitator for the Faculty of Education, where she supported hundreds of funding proposals for a wide range of programs, including government, foundation, and international funding. Tanya has a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Toronto and over twenty years of related experience.

Amanda Ha – Post Award Support Coordinator  

Amanda has a PhD in Medical Genetics from the University of British Columbia and a BSC in Microbiology from the University of Victoria. She will bring valuable and practical experience from her research work to the team. Amanda will initially focus on facilitating new and existing awards. She will also assist with maintaining RAIS data and records.

Anil Narine – Research and Grants Facilitator, Faculty of Education

Anil joins us from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD University), where he supported faculty members in their applications for research grants and helped coordinate the construction of a permanent research Centre on campus. He held various roles in the department of Communications and Culture, and Visual Studies at the University of Toronto and he was a research fellow in London and New York. Anil was a researcher on the documentary film My Millennial Life (Canadian Screen Award 2017) and is also a proud graduate of the University of Victoria.  

Kailie Marlowe – Human Research Ethics Assistant

Kailie will help the Human Research Ethics team track ethics applications, assist researchers with the RAIS system and research ethics policies and guidelines, and liaise with staff at other BC research ethics board offices to support the review of provincial-level applications. As a graduate of UVic and a former research assistant in the Department of Psychology, Kailie is familiar with our campus research environment, and brings significant private sector administrative experience to the role.

Research Partnerships Office

Aislinn Sirk – Associate Director – Innovation Management

Aislinn is now leading the team working on invention disclosures, patenting, technology licensing, and commercialization within the Research Partnerships Office.  They work closely with the Contracts team and Grant Facilitator network on intellectual property reviews to support research partnerships.

Aislinn has over ten years of experience developing and supporting university partnerships at UVic. She has a Juris Doctor (Law) from UVic focusing on intellectual property, a PhD in Electrochemistry from the University of Calgary, and spent four years as a post-doctoral research scientist at MIT.

Rachel Corder – Manager – Research Agreements

Rachel now manages the Contracts team, which reviews and negotiates agreements with government, community, and industry partners within Canada and internationally. These agreements include sponsored research agreements, NDAs, material transfer agreements, equipment use agreements, data sharing agreements, and collaborative research agreements.

Rachel has over eight years of experience as a Research Agreements Facilitator at UVic. She has a Juris Doctor from the Faculty of Law at UVic and a Bachelor of Arts (History and English Literature) from UBC. 

Contacts

• VPRI directory listing
• Research Services directory listing